The new MacBook Air has the highest number of liquid contact indicators, or LCIs, of any Apple product yet… little stickers that tell a Genius if it’s okay to deny you service on your broken gadget because you dropped it in the drink.
LCIs have always been troubling, since they tend to trigger by humidity alone, making Apple gadgets a risky investment for those who live in the tropics. Apple’s actually been sued about false LCI reports, so the fact that the new Air had so many of them was particularly worrisome: it seemed like Apple was just chomping at the bit to deny you service on the notoriously hard-to-service Air.
However, things may not be as clearly conspiratorial as that.
Boy Genius Report has heard from its Genius mole, who send along word that Apple is revising its policy of denying warranty service based upon a single triggered LCI. At least in the iPod line, warranty will now only be denied if more than one moisture sensor is triggered.
It’s a small change, and it’s not likely to help individuals living in tropical or humid climates, but let’s hope that Apple rolls this more lenient policy about LCIs across their whole product line. Given the questionable veracity of a triggered moisture sensor, requiring proof by redundancy seems like a good policy.
